A Reminder Of Mortality

A Reminder Of Mortality.

Most of Sarah’s past seemed to fall into a hazy blur, some memories got mixed up into each other and they all become one big memory and that’s all that mattered. It didn’t matter to Sarah that she couldn’t put dates and times against particular memories, she was just glad she had them there, stored in her head, they were her memories and they comforted her, Only a few actually stood out and no matter how she tried to forget some of them or make them seem better, they remained, burned inside her mind.
The earliest memory that she could pick out was at a birthday party, she was young, almost five, her friends were all playing in the garden it was a hot day and she was having fun, she could see all the grown ups stood in the kitchen through the window, she could see them all crowded round her mother, her mother was crying, naturally this upset Sarah, but she didn’t want to cry in front of all her other friends at the party, that would be wrong, she was a big girl now, her mummy had told her that, so she didn’t cry. Sarah raced around the garden with her friends laughing and trying not to think about her mother in the kitchen, Sarah had her plan worked out to help her mother anyway, it was just a matter of time before she executed her fall and then all she had to do was act like she was in pain and her mother would stop crying and help her.
She tripped and fell, just as she planned but didn’t land as she had wanted to and she landed on her face, her nose bled and she screamed so loud her mother said afterwards that it could be heard on the moon.
It was May 1^st, Sarah remembered it so well, she never went to another birthday party on May 1^st again, that day will always be remembered as the day her father was killed in an Army exercise that went terribly wrong, killing one man, her father, the only man on the exercise who had children, fate can be horribly cruel some times, even at that young age, she could remember his face and her desperate attempts to only cry when her mother wasn’t looking, if she was caught crying by her mother she insisted that it was because she had hurt herself. She still has a little weep now, on the anniversary of his death, even though it was 25 years ago, the pain still hurts as much as it did when it happened, time has not been the great healer she was promised it would be.
Her next major memory in her route through life was secondary school and her main G.C.E. exams, she was terrified of failure, it had been instilled into all the pupils that failure was not an option if they wanted a decent life, a decent job, and employer will not employ someone who had failed all their exams. Sarah remembered sitting in the examination room with the rest of her school year, she had gone blank, the sound of other people scribbling words onto their paper terrified her as she looked down to her paper and all she had managed in an hour was to write her name. She couldn’t handle the pressure that was put on her to succeed, so she passed out.
She was always going to fail the exams, she was not an academic success nor was she going to be able to fluke a pass in her exams, she would have to join the line of people in the world who just manage to eek their way through life.

2

At 20 Sarah attempted suicide, she failed, it was a half hearted effort and was more of a cry for help, a cry for attention that drove her to try and kill herself.
Mark was his name, it was his fault, he drove her to the brink, although he didn’t actually push her over it, it felt like he had sowed the seed, She had loved him, he had loved her, Sarah would do anything for Mark, she felt that they would be together forever, they way that young love always lies to you. They were great together, they worked well together, and they were, in all sense of the words, a perfect couple, perfect that is, until Sarah got pregnant.
Mark wasn’t ready for the kind of responsibilities that fatherhood would bring him, so he left Sarah. He walked out without so much as an explanation, just the words, “I’m sorry, have a good life Sarah”
7 words that ended a relationship and almost her life, she lost the baby in the suicide attempt, this hurt her most, the baby was the only link she had to Mark and now it was gone.
Sarah never found love again, she didn’t want another man and she still loved Mark, despite what he did to her.
Her mother died on Sarah’s twenty eighth birthday, she had been very sick and Sarah had been caring for her for the past two years, It was still a shock to lose her mother even though she had been expecting it from the day she was diagnosed with Cancer, the doctors had given her six months to live so Sarah tried to make it the best six months of her mother life, If she was to die, then Sarah wanted it to be as painless and as comfortable as possible. It was not easy on Sarah to look after her mother but she felt a need to do something, she was glad that her mother defied the doctors predictions and enjoyed a further eighteen months with her, her mother was her closest companion her only real friend and now she was totally alone.
She was thirty now, it was exactly two years since her mothers death and she knew she wasn’t happy with life again, that’s why her memories are the only comfort she had, even though she couldn’t remember them all, and even though some of them became one.
As Sarah plummeted to the ground on her final decent from her apartment window, her life once again, flashed before her eyes, the memories played out as one short story.